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A recent survey of has named the late Apple executive Steve Jobs as the person who has done the most to shape the video games industry.

In the survey conducted by the London Games Conference Apple's iPhone was also voted as the top product to have impacted the industry, ahead of traditional games consoles.

26 per cent of repsondents named Jobs as their pick, followed by Gabe Newell of Valve, Shigeru Miyamoto, Tim Berners-Lee and Mark Zuckerberg.

In the product category the iPhone was way ahead of its nearest competitor the Wii, scoring 17 per cent ahead of the console's 7 per cent. Xbox Live won 3 per cent to tie it with the PlayStation 1, just ahead of Steam at 2 per cent.

1000 members of the industry were questioned for the survey, ahead of the London Games Conference which takes place November 10.

Games Jobs

17 Comments

i don't really think he helped shape the industry , he just brought a device for which the gaming industry people showed interested in developing games, i think valve's steam is the thing that shaped the digital industry era since it was the first to really implement something revolutionary for the industry. I would agree tho that, the iphone really did impact the video game industry bringing gaming , even "hardcore" gaming to the masses.

I would say Nolan Bushnal should be up there. If the iPhone didn't exist, someone else may or may not have got there, but if not, there would still be plenty of home videogames.

If Atari never existed someone may have got there with something like pong, but if not, there may be no home videogames.

Also, Steve Jobs may have had an influence on the industry, but it was totally accidental, he seemed to have no interest in games on Apple, the boom on iPhone was driven by games being what people made/bought when the option to make apps was introduced. Even when they took off I don't think Steve Jobs ever felt in his element talking about them.

If this list were talking about the most influential people within the last year, then Jobs would definitely get my vote. However, if this is talking about the entire history of videogames, Shigeru Miyamoto would without a doubt get my vote, probably followed by Nolan Bushnell. As much as I like Steve Jobs, I don't think he was involved in the development of videogame and game related products long enough to be voted #1. Had he been alive for another 10 years and continued to influence the direction games would go in, then maybe.

@Jon-Erich: Even over the past year, was it really Steve Jobs influencing the types of apps being produced? He had nothing to do with the rise of mobile and social gaming, it was simply a byproduct of the technology that his company produced. He's no more influential than Mark Zuckerberg or the Google guys.

Just because he died doesn't mean he's the technology god. Another cult of personality at work.

My babbage joke was referring to the fact they all invented platforms that games are played on, games would adapt and be made on any platform. It's the games that change the industry. btw - you may need to google him as you clearly missed it.

Miyamoto I don't need to explain and Carmack invented the FPS, there's a few others worth mentioning but I think it's a toss between these two.

This article is obviously about the last year(s) in the game industry and as such they are voting for Jobs as it was the iPhone and App Store that bought games (casual) to the masses, it opened the way for game designers and programmers to go independent and open their own companies, and basically shook the industry at many levels, just look at Satoru Iwata and the 3DS, Sony basically acknowledging of the Apps impact with the Vita, etc.

Lets try to be objective here, I do love games and feel that there are more people with such a huge passion for games that I think should be appreciated more than Steve Jobs, but the fact of the matter is that for better or worst Jobs and his ideas had the bigger effect on our industry.

It looks like the poll was done at an Apple fanboys convention. If you asked who's the most influential figure in the medical profession or who was the first man on the moon you'd probably get the same answer.

Although I don't personally agree with the choice of Jobs, I do agree with Germán's comments above - in recent times there is probably no hardware or infrastructure which has been more influential on gaming than Apple's iOS output, and Jobs was the obvious figurehead of that movement.

Personally, the likes of Miyamoto, Sakaguchi, Ueda and Kojima would feature highly, and I'd have to doff my cap to Jenova Chen, Amy Hennig and Demon's/Dark Souls director Miyazaki.